Imre Lakatos’ idea that history of science without philosophy of science is blind may still be given a plausible interpretation today, even though his theory of the methodology of scientific research programmes has been rejected. The latter theory captures neither rationality in science nor the sense in which history must be told in a rational fashion. Nonetheless, Lakatos was right in insisting that the discipline of history consists of written rational reconstructions. In this paper, we will examine possible ways to cash out different, philosophically interesting, relationships: between rationality and science, between rationality and philosophy of science and/or epistemology, and, of course, between history and philosophy of science. Our conclusion is that the historian of science may be a philosopher of science as weIl, but if that philosophy of science is essentially a historical and dogmatic, it either cannot be used for history or it will deprive history of some of its most interesting and useful categories.

Este trabajo se encuadra dentro de una nueva visión de la lógica de Leibniz, la cual pretende mostrar que sus escritos fueron ricos no solamente en proyectos ambiciosos (Característica Universal, Combinatoria, Mathesis) sino también en desarrollos lógico-matematicos concretos. Se demuestra que su “Caracteristica Numerica” que asigna pares de números a las proposiciones categóricas es una semántiea para la cual la silogística aristotélica es correcta y completa, y que el sistema algebraico presentado en Fundamentos de un Cálculo Lógico es una lógica algebraica similar a la de Boole.This work is a contribution to a new view of Leibniz’s logic, pretending to show that his writings were not only rich in projects (Characteristica, Combinatoria, Mathesis), but also in concrete logico-mathematical developments. We prove that his “Numerical Characteristic” assigning pairs of numbers to terms of categorical propositions, is a complete and correct semantics for aristotelian syllogistic, and the algebraic system presented in Fundamentals of Logical Calculus is essentially a complete version of boolean algebraic logic.

EI desarrollo de su teoría de las leyes como relaciones entre universales condujo a Armstrong a establecer un marco metafísico general mas complejo que el que sus anteriores trabajos presentaban. En este artículo se exponen los aspectos principales de la metafísica de particulares y universales exigida por la identificación original de Armstrong de las leyes con estados de cosas universales. Además, se presentan diversas dificultades que pueden hallarse en su propuesta, y algunas soluciones para las mismas. Los temas principales que se discuten son las leyes con excepciones, las leyes con restriccionesespacio-temporales, las leyes probabilísticas y las leyes no ejemplificadas.The development of his theory of laws as relations between universals led Armstrong to set up a more complex general metaphysical framework than that advanced in his previous works. In this paper I present the main traits of the metaphysics of properties and particulars required by Armstrongsoriginal identification of laws with universal states of affairs. Besides, I advance some serious drawbacks that can be found in his proposal and I also offer some solutions to them. The main subjects to be discussed here will be laws with exceptions, laws with spatio-temporal limitations, probabilistic laws and uninstantiated laws.

The starting point of this work is the existence of historical paradoxes in the set theory. These are: Russell's paradox, applied to the set W, Cantor's, for the set U, and Burali-Forti's, of the set Omega. A systematic analysis aimed at the simplification and the refining of such paradoxes showed that: (i) there exist at least eight contradictory expressions instead of three; (ii) another contradictory set is suggested by an extension of Burali-Forti's paradox; (iii) almost all of the contradictions apply to more than one paradoxical set.

Belnap and Gupta have recently maintained that truth is a circular concept: its extension cannot be established without being previously hypothesized. This has led Yaqub to claim that the circular character in question cannot be made compatible with the thesis that semantic properties tlre supervenient ones. Belnap and Gupta have explicitly denied sitch a claim any plausibility. In this paper, I offir some new arguments in support of Yaqub 's position. Such arguments are based on an analysis of some aspects of Belnap and Gupta's theory that, as for as I know, had not been considered before.

This paper contains two sections. In the first one, some ideas on human mind Dennett presents in his book Consciousness Explained are sketched. In the second section, a critical review is made on Dennett's Multiple Drafts Theory. It is concluded that some of its proposals do not find enough experimental support from research on Cognitive Neuroscience. Even though there is no cardinal point in the brain, both functional and anatomical criteria can be found to distinguish conscious and unconscious information processing in the human brain

This paper presents a critical evaluation of different opinions about determinism in Classical Mechanics. The goal of this analysis is to show that, even in the supposedly non controversial field of Classical Mechanics, the answer about determinism is not univocally fixed by scientific arguments, but inescapably depends on the epistemological perspective fom which the problem is formulated.

The notion of stimulus meaning, a key notion for Quine's Indeterminacy of Translation thesis, has undergone an essentiaJ change fi'om the beginning of the nineties. Then, this essay offers an expository work oj this change (its origin and motivations) and its final result. Th~ main aim of this essay is to show the validity of the reasons that forced Quine to modify his stimulus meaning notion and the failure of its substitutes (global stimulus, stimulus range, and perceptual similarity) to solue the problems they were thought to give an account of. Moreover, these new notions make the Indeterminacy Thesis, mainly the Inscrutability of Reference Thesis, face new problems and, if I'm right, unsolvable ones.

A prevailing assumption in contemporary epistemology is that there exists a conceptual connection between the notions of belief and rationality. In this paper I examine a weak notion of rationality, according to which it is not necessary to assume the existence of a uniquc set of norms of rationality in order to be able to assign beliefi to a subject. From this point of view, belief attribution only requires that we understand a subject's utterances and, to do this, we only need assume that she is similar to us in some epistemic relevant issues.

Peacocke's explanation of the first-person concept provides non-circu/ar possession conditions for such a concept, accommodating two different constraints: the noncircularity requirement and Evans's Thesis. In this paper, it is argued that Peacocke's explanation faces some difficulties: on the one hand, it appears unable to meet a serious objection facing the non-circularity requirement; on the other hand, it misunderstands the constitutive constraints imposed by Evans's Thesis on a correct account of the first person.

Debate among scientists is frequently hampered by intense difficulties in communicating and translating their viewpoints. This well-known fact illustrates the role of unarticulated core knowledge in the activities of sientific communities. But it has been little noticed that the issue afficts not just written science, but especially traditions of experimental activity and their products, including instruments and techniques. The question is addressed on the basis of examples from the history of optics and electromagnetism - Fresnel and Brewster, Maxwell and Hertz - and texts from Kuhn's Structure. Particular attention is paid to interrelations between succeeding theories, and to the notorious problem of theory-choice.

We study twentieth-century biological sciences as experimental sciences by historically reconstructing the uses of experiments. Concepts like artificial, natural, and inventions, are handled so as to show how much current biological thought has been constructed on the basis of the invention of different kinds of experiments, instruments, and technical devices, experimental systems, and ideas concerning the fonctioning of nature. It is suggested that the frontier that may separate the natural from the artificial has already been crossed. Human intervention in the natural phenomena through reproducible experiments hints to a view of current biological knowledge as a permanent invention of nature.

The more unknowns there are and the newer a field of research is, the less well defined are the experiments. Once a field has been sufficiently worked over so that the possible conclusions are more or less limited to existence or nonexistence, and perhaps to quantitative determination, the experiments will become increasingly better defined. But they will no longer be independent, because they are carried along by a system of earlier experiments and decisions, which is generally the situation in physics and chemistry today. Such a system will then become self-evident know-how itself. We will no longer be aware of its application and effect (Fleck 1935 (1980), p. 114, translation slightly altered from Fleck 1979, p. 86, original emphasis).

Computational simulations are now useful tools in experimental life. Their novelty and continuous development make it very difficult to understand their epistemic relevance. In this paper a first evaluation of them is presented through a parallel between thought experiments and computational simulations. Both simulations that play the role of actual experiment and also simulations that are part of experiments will be under scrutiny, since both of them are important in the understanding of contemporary experiments. But simulations as parts of actual experiments can especially show a new face in the complex relation theory-experiment.

According to van Fraassen, constructive empiricism (CE) makes better sense of scientific activity than scientific realism (SR). I discuss a recent episode in biomedical research - investigations about Helicobacter Pylori and its relation to peptic ulcer. CE's expedient to cope with it is a sort of belief substitution. I argue that replacing realist beliefs by empiricist surrogates (as-if beliefs) could accommodate scientists' expectations and behavior. Nonetheless, theoretical agnosticism could hardly motivate scientists to focus just on the observational consequences derived from the theory at issue. Contrary to van Fraassen, I conclude then that, concerning scientific practice, realist beliefs cannot be considered as a gratuitious surplus which should be rejected.

In this paper I shall carefully examine some recent arguments for dualism. These arguments presuppose a strong version of physicalism that I consider inappropriate. I shall try to show that, if we reformulate the thesis of physicalism according to Kim's view of physicalism (in terms of the supervenience relation), there is a third option, a version of type physicalism, where physicalism and quaiia could be conciliated. In order to sketch this option, I shall consider the main argument against type physicalism: the explanatory gap argument, and two arguments that Kim mentions against physicalism: the inverted spectrum / zombies argument and the intrinsicality argument. I shall try to show that these three arguments depend upon a misconception of the nature of our ordinary mental concepts.